


Every Perfect Summer's Eating Me Alive (Until You're Gone)

by kikitheslayer



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/F, Getting Together, Reincarnation, includes hollstein and brief mentions of hollence i just didnt want it in the main tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-30
Updated: 2017-03-30
Packaged: 2018-10-12 20:39:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10499040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kikitheslayer/pseuds/kikitheslayer
Summary: Possible Lawstein endgame written before season 3 aired.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Just a weird plot bunny. Obvs now rendered completely void by canon.
> 
> Obligatory I love Laura, etc.

Danny reads next to Carmila in the library. She’s sitting on one chair and has her legs stretched out onto another. She flips a page, but Carmilla knows she’s not really reading, can tell in the way Danny’s eyes keep darting up to hers.

Carmilla's doing a valiant job of ignoring her, considering all she wanted was a single day of peace before she grabbed her love’s hand and fled into the sunset, a day for calm and remembrance, for her mother and everything she used to be. Laura is across campus spending the day the same way, mourning friends and innocence. Carmilla could be with her. But no, this is what felt right, to leave Silas as she came: alone, with a book in her hands.

Red, of course, doesn’t seem to respect her plans at all.

Danny runs a hand unconsciously over a bandage wrapped around her head, a remnant from the battle. “It’ll heal,” Carmilla is thinking of screaming, because all this is smothering, Danny’s presence and ticks and little noises and even her leaden, suffocating silence.

Before Carmilla can however, Danny speaks, still not looking up, her voice almost bored. “So… you die before you become a vampire, right? Like, full-on die. Do vampires get reincarnated?”

Carmilla turns a page. “Do I look quite dead to you, Red?”

Danny shrugs. “Soulless, maybe.”

Carmilla shakes her head and tries to focus on the black type and yellow pages. But it’s one of the things Carmilla hate Danny most for. Once she’s there, Carmilla can’t rid her head of her. She sighs in defeat. “Why do you ask?”

Danny shrugs. “Just wondering what to do if I see someone who looks like you. Hate to stake an innocent.”

“The chances we cross paths again are exceptionally low, especially if I have anything to do with it.” After a moment, she adds, “Stop worrying, newbie. Go back to reading Divergent, or whatever else it is that passes for literature this days.”

“Your references are atrocious.” When Carmilla doesn’t respond, she says, her voice oddly even, “I’m gonna miss you. Not just Laura. You, too.”

Carmilla doesn’t look up, but she does sneak a peak. Danny’s still staring at her book, but one of her hands in clenched beneath the cover.

Carmilla never does respond. She lets it hang there, heavy.

\--

Laura is pulling Carmilla down a crowded street, her palm soft and warm in Carmilla’s hand. Carmilla means to shout something biting about the noise, but it’s lost on her tongue as she catches a flash of a face passing by.

Carmilla releases Laura’s hand, whirling around, but that face, that familiar smile, is already gone, disappeared into a sea of hundred other faces.

Laura rests a hand on Carmilla’s back, having waded through the people back to her. “You okay?” she asks, raising her voice to be heard.

Carmilla shakes herself, swallows. “Thought I saw somebody!” she yells in explanation.

Carmilla curses in her head as they continue on. The last thing in the world Carmilla need is for Danny to be right about something. The last thing Carmilla needs is a _second one_.

\--

Danny stands next to Carmilla at the funeral. She slides into the cemetery a few minutes late and stands with Carmilla in the back. She doesn’t say a word.

It’s not til the speeches have stopped, til all there is is an open casket, dark and shining, with Laura, _Carmilla’s_ Laura, asleep on cream cushioning, that Danny finally opens her mouth to say something. But she still can’t get words around the lump in her throat, so she simply jerks her head in the direction of the coffin, a question.

Carmilla shakes her head, a small motion. She is holding herself ro rigid she’s almost shaking, like she’s full of energy and only complete concentration will keep it from exploding outward. “I can’t…” she starts, her voice pathetically weak, “It’s not my place.”

Not her place, she means, to be standing at the podium and trying to explain Laura to this crowd of woefully average extended family. Not her place to look Sherman in the eye and say, _“Hi, I’m the vampire that got your daughter killed.”_

I can’t, she means, see her like this. All perfect, pumped full of chemicals and preservatives. It will only look unnatural, no matter what the brochure says. Carmilla already saw Laura like this, curled in her arms, so pretty from the stab-wound up. Her eyes were as bright as ever as they shut, still making Carmilla feel small, as though they were looking right through her. No posthumous make-over will ever make Laura more beautiful than she was then, almost glowing, as brave in death as in life.

No image of Laura looking peaceful could ever chase away the memory of Laura’s fingers weakening around hers, or her blood staining Carmilla’s hands, even as she scrubbed, sobbing and cursing like Lady Macbeth.

Carmilla will stand here, because she would not disrespect Laura like that. She couldn’t live with herself if she skipped out. But the second the last mourner’s shaken her hand, she’s flying to somewhere they never got to, somewhere Laura’s ghost won’t be just around every corner.

Danny’s staring at her, and Carmilla wants to snap, but she can’t find it in her.

Finally, Danny shakes her head, shoots her a sad smile and walks through the aisles of fold-up chairs to the casket.

\--

“Where are you going?” asks Danny, her voice hushed, though they are walking behind the rest of the funeral party.

“Somewhere else,” Carmilla says. She’s gazing up at the afternoon sky in a daze.

“Come with me,” Danny says, an offer. “I’ve got a hotel room in the city tonight, but then wherever you want. I’ve been floating around Europe but --”

Carmilla doesn’t smile, but if only because it seems a waste not to, she says, “My, my, Red, hitting on the widow at a the funeral?”

Danny scoffs. “Geez, fangface, I was just trying to be nice. You know I --”

She doesn’t finish the thought, so Carmilla colors it in for her. _You know I’m lonely._ Because who could understand better than Carmilla what it means to be a vampire so desperately human? _You know I don’t hate you._ Carmilla wishes she did. _You know I loved her, too._

Who else could understand?

\--

“I saw you,” Carmilla says quietly, into the darkness. They are both curled on the hotel bed, just an inch away from touching. “On a street in Prague. Not you but -- you.”

“Reincarnation,” Danny says quietly. “I know. I read about it the day…” She trails off.

“The day Laura and I left Silas,” Carmilla finishes. “You asked me about it.”

“I know. It was in the book I was reading. I wanted to see if you knew.”

Carmilla rolls her eyes. “Why on earth would you want to know that?”

“Because if you didn’t it was really funny.”

Carmilla sighs and her eyes flick shut. “Shut it, newbie.”

There’s a pause, then Danny says, “I can move to the floor if you want.”

“No,” says Carmilla, finally, because she’d do anything to avoid another night of facing the gaping expanse of the mattress alone. “Stay.”

From Danny’s sigh of relief, it occurs to Carmilla that all this might be as much for Danny’s benefit as hers.

\--

She is gone by the time Danny wakes up.

\--

Carmilla is having lunch outside a cafe in Buenos Aires when she sees her. For a moment, it’s like she’s lost the ability think.

The woman is oblivious, of course, laughing as she approaches, looking over her shoulder as someone approaches. But despite her black hair and unfamiliar features, there’s no mistaking it; Carmilla would know that walk, that laugh, that being anywhere.

She watches as the New Laura’s companion catches up to her and grabs her hand.

As they enter the restaurant, Carmilla looks down at her food, smirking. You win this one, Red.

\--

It’s another decade before she sees Danny -- the real one -- again. She’s staying in a vampire refuge, one night only, and it just so happens that so is Danny. She tosses Carmilla a blood bag, her treat, and demands to take her out.

Carmilla groans but accepts the offer.

Carmilla would like to say that Danny looks different, that something in her eyes is older, more weathered, but no matter how many glances she steals, she can’t find anything. She’s the same as ever, headstrong and brave. Carmilla can tell she still thinks the world is worth saving. Carmilla wants to ask her her secret like it’s a skincare regime.

They dance in a nightclub and Carmilla finds herself actually laughing. Danny joins in, loud and unapologetic, It’s been a long time since anything has been funny, but suddenly _everything_ is: the silly new human inventions, the music blasting into those dumb earpieces everyone wears these days, the way Danny’s lips curl with mock-disdain on the word “fangface,” the fact that they are both there, sharing the same air, again.

\--

Carmilla tells her about Buenos Aires.

Danny grins. “That’s how a Lawrence gets it done!”

“Alright, Xena, calm down,” Carmilla says, “you and Laura had your moments. New me could sweep in at any moment.”

Danny shook her head. “Not to sound like a Zeta, but once you go Danny, you never go back.”

Carmilla smirks and takes another sip of her milkshake. They are sitting in a deserted diner, even the woman behind the counter having disappeared, the dim lights flickering and showcasing the grime on the seldom-cleaned linoleum, the pink in Danny’s cheeks that Carmilla isn’t sure of the biology behind. “I find that very hard to believe.”

Danny should flirt, say, _“Want to find out?”_ but she doesn’t. Somehow, it’s worse than if she did.

“Hey,” says Danny, pulling a phone out of the back pocket of her yellow jeans. “Give me your number.”

Carmilla almost makes a sarcastic comment, because vampires aren’t supposed to engage with technology, they are supposed to view it as just another of humanity’s cute little quirks. But then, there is a phone in her pocket, with an app long since abandoned, where she follows one person. She tugs it out and laysit on the table. She needs to say something, so she says, scoffing, “Samsung?”

Danny shrugs. “Couldn’t stand how thin the iphone is. Besides, vamp on a budget.”

Carmilla forces a laugh as she punches in her number.

\--

Carmilla gets a text years later and thanks the gods that her phone is still the same.

Xena, 4:14 pm:  
[Just saw “you” and “L” in Thailand. The score is even.]

Carmilla respectfully waits a few minutes before replying,

Fangface, 4:22 pm:  
[Suppose I won her from you? Or new L?]

Xena, 4:22 pm:  
[Not sure.]  
Xena, 4:22 pm:  
[Don’t reincarnates have to grow up or whatever? She was just a teenager. Could have been new one.]

Fangface, 4:23 pm:  
[Someone needs to take better care of our girl.]

Carmilla’s hands shake as she types, and she suddenly has the annoying, juvenile urge to toss her phone across the urge while a typing bubble appears across the screen. Then:

Xena, 4:23 pm:  
[Agreed. We were clearly the best generation.]

Carmilla smiles at that, just a little.

\--

Years pass, and decades turn to centuries as easily as hay spins to gold on a spinning wheel. They watch, old souls, as young lovers rise and fall like the sea. They are removed, never speaking to their charges, but invested all the same. They smirk together at the follies of youth, and shed tears in private. That was them when they were old enough to know better.

The ones they watch are always so different. But their spirits are the same. Danny, though she no longer knows herself by that name, is still brave. Carmilla is still full of love. Laura is still the moon, shining bright with enthusiasm. And they are like the tides trapped in her pull.

Carmilla always feels a rush of excitement when she spots one of them, but she has an inkling, as she rushes to grab her phone, or the century’s equivalent, that it isn’t quite the same breed as the excitement of the beginning.

Once, Danny texts,

Xena, 2:14 am:  
[Just saw Laura alone. Felt weird.]

Carmilla swallows hard as she types,

Fangface, 2:15 am:  
[Maybe she’ll live this time.]

\--

Carmilla sees her in Italy, Japan, America. They get dinner and go dancing and see plays. They talk about books, about humanity’s new heroes, about Laura. Sometimes Carmilla will see her even when she’s not there, just a flash of red hair down the street that leaves her stumbling.

\--

“Newbie.”

If Danny is surprised, she doesn’t show it through her sunglasses. “Fangface.”

“What in god’s name are you doing here?”

Danny gestures to the path. “Trying to remember what running was like before it was hard. I’ve been stabbed in the gut, but I don’t think that was quite it.”

“Running was worse,” Carmilla says, remembering. She sits next to Danny on the bench.

“I’ve been keeping tabs on New Carm,” she says. “I met her in Paris.”

Carmilla watches a woman in pink running gear jog by. “First contact,” she comments.

“What’s the score now? 5 - 7?”

“My favor.”

After a while, Danny says, “I just had a terrible thought.”

“Do share.”

“What if our ages get out of sync? Laura never struck me as an older women sort of girl.”

Carmilla just turns to look at her, raising an eyebrow.

Danny burst out laughing, almost doubling over.

\--

They take a walk on the edge of the road as the sun went down, the sky’s soft blue deepening, the streetlights just coming on.

Danny’s hand brushes Carmilla’s “Stay.”

Carmilla swallows. She wants to say no, leave before something happens, something she can’t take back.

“Okay.”

\--

Danny kisses her on the hotel balcony.

They are standing there, shoulders pressed together, watching the stars. They are dim from this vantage point, not the sky Carmilla remembers waltzing under, but they are there, big and hot, and they’ve been watching over her for so long.

Danny points at a particularly bright one. “Look at that,” she says.

“I don’t know that one’s name.”

“I know. Just look.”

Carmilla does, focuses on the pinprick of light. It takes a moment to realize that Danny has turned, is now staring at her with an awe usually reserved for celestial beings.

Carmilla knows what will happen before it happens. It’s heavy for a moment, red and hot and barrelling in far too fast. She remembers this feeling. Remembers hundreds of years ago watching a girl across the room and pining, watching a girl smile and remembering what the world was like when it had meaning.

Danny kisses her. It all becomes much more simple.

Danny pulls back after just a moment, licking her chapped lips. “Stay?”

Carmilla rolls her eyes. “Stay.”

\--

Later, when they are tangled up in the hotel bed, Danny shuffled beside Carmilla, arms wrapped around her torso, cool skin against cool skin, Carmilla says wryly, “Well, Danny Lawrence, I do believe you’ve won.”

Danny offers a small, sad smile. “Fair’s fair. You got the important one, anyway.”

Carmilla swallows. “Well played, newbie.”

“Danny chuckles, pulling her closer. “Can you really still call me that?”

Carmilla leans forward, kissed her jaw. “To me, you’re a spring chicken, my love.”

“Well, I believe you said something earlier about older women…”

Carmilla laughs quietly. After a moment, she turns and looks up. Danny is beautiful, pale as death with the moonlight behind her. Carmilla asks, “What now?”

“I don’t know," says Danny thoughtfully, leaning down and kissing Carmilla’s shoulder, “but we’ve got time.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Liability" by Lorde.


End file.
